Curt Colbert - Seattle Noir

Gus also had a stash of cash in a bus station locker and a drop mailbox in his name at a place on Capitol Hill. That’s where he received his disability check. It was a kiss-off from the San Jacinto Police Department: leave the force, get out of the state, and don’t come back. Gus had been working a child molester case where a six-year-old kid died after being repeatedly raped. Following a four-month trial, the monster got off on a technicality. Gus couldn’t let him do it to another kid. The boy’s bruised body, his face like an angel’s in one of the cathedral windows, haunted him. He saw him in his sleep and would wake up crying. Hitting the bottle didn’t make the images go away. So Gus tracked the guy down, tailing him day and night and stoking himself on good old Jose Cuervo. When the guy took off on Highway 101 to get out of town, Gus followed him. On a lonely stretch, Gus did some fancy tailgating that he had learned in police academy training, fished the asshole in his Toyota off the road and over an embankment. The car rolled and then caught fire when it hit bottom. The perp toasted inside. Better than going to hell, the way Gus figured it.

Of course, the San Jacinto PD had their suspicions but didn’t work the case hard. Gus’s captain didn’t do much talking, but some suggesting. So Gus left the department after eighteen years, with a couple of commendations, a hearty handshake, and the warning, “Don’t come back.” Same held true for his marriage. “You’ve changed and I can’t live with you anymore,” his wife had said. She kept the kids and booted him out of the house.

He didn’t look back.

Gus had called from a pay phone to find out what room Sweet Sue was in-found he was in a ward, the kind with beds in rooms that ringed a nurses’ station. Gus fingered the hard peppermint candies in his pocket, Sweet Sue’s favorites. The ends of the cellophane wrappers crackled when he touched them.

The nurses and hospital aides at the station were deep in conversation when Gus walked by and entered Sweet Sue’s room. His roommate was sleeping, and so was Sweet Sue. The tread mark from a sneaker was outlined in ugly red and purple bruising on the old man’s left cheek. A bandage covered part of his skull and one eye. His arm was in a cast, and he had more bandages around his chest. A fury that Gus hadn’t felt in a long time boiled up in him, so thick and red that he couldn’t see for a moment. Then it subsided, chilling, turning into a sharp edge of calculating revenge that cut through the fuzz in Gus’s brain.

He stared at Sweet Sue. The man didn’t have a mean bone in his body and was as simple as they come. His shallow breathing hardly moved the covers on him. Gus thought he’d slammed the door on caring for anyone. But now Gus groaned and bent over the bed. He didn’t want to hurt, to feel. He couldn’t open up the logjam inside that kept everything behind it sealed out of sight and touch. Neither his daughter Jenny nor this old, broken-down hobo deserved what happened to them.

Gus leaned over and put his mouth close to Sweet Sue’s good ear. “I’m here, buddy. Gawd. I’m sorry.” He lightly clasped Sue’s scrawny good shoulder. “I’ll get the bastards. I promise.” Then he put the hard candy on the nightstand and left.

Gus took a bus and transferred and then got off on the east side of Lake Union. He had a favorite spot, a bench, where he could watch the boats and the seagulls. It was too cold, and there were no boats out sailing. The waves were an ugly gray, looking as mean as Gus felt. The seagulls did their thing, squealing and wheeling about, and he took the lid off his triple-mocha shot that he’d bought at Starbucks. He shivered in his thin shirt and windbreaker-but welcomed the cold. It crystallized his thinking. He didn’t have a lot of time. It was strange that a Rasta had kicked in Sweet Sue’s face-not any Rastafarians around, except the wannabes he’d seen from time to time. And the guy sure as hell wouldn’t be hanging around in the cold and rain of Seattle if he didn’t have to. He’d be on the first plane out of SeaTac, headed for Jamaica or wherever he came from, as soon as he’d peddled his weed and made some bucks.

The cold seemed to freeze the fuzz in Gus’s head, but made clear channels, letting ideas flow. It was like the synapses in his brain were snapping together, ones he hadn’t used in a long while.

He’d learned the hard way in investigations: look first for the obvious. Why was this guy hanging around a homeless camp, peddling dope to someone who probably only had chump change? He’d have easier chances making a sale with the potheads who hung out on Capitol Hill. A black man with dreadlocks, wearing a T-shirt with Bob Marley’s picture on it, would be accepted, fit in.

Gus reached into the bag of cookies he’d bought with the coffee. He broke off a piece from one and threw it by a dirty gray seagull, which inspected and then rejected it. Gus reflected again on the Rasta and thought about the stores and cafés that lined Capitol Hill’s main drag. They catered to a cultural mix of apartment/condo dwellers, community college kids, fringies, and refugees. Gus blew out his breath and it turned white in the cold air. Damn. He should have remembered before. A Caribbean jerk chicken place had opened up recently on Broadway. What if the creep was related or connected? It would make sense. Could be a reason for him setting up shop on the hill, making it his territory. Not much to go on-it was a stretch. But better than nothing. Gus drank the last of his cold coffee and then threw the remaining cookies on the grass. It’d be sunset soon. The leaden sky promised a dark night.

He shivered and stood up. What he needed was a plan…and a warmer jacket.

On the way to his locker at the bus station, Gus stopped at a liquor store and bought a couple bottles of Jose Cuervo. Then he continued on to the station to collect his winter jacket and stow away the one he had on. He took out his emergency envelope of cash and a gym bag that carried his essentials for late-night work. Then he stopped in the washroom. Now he had the beginning of a plan. But first he had to find this creep.

On the bus ride up Pill Hill, he kept his mind on Sweet Sue, picturing his pale, stomped-on face. He wanted to keep his focus. But then at his stop, a young woman stepped in front of him as the bus door opened. She flashed an apologetic smile, and Gus’s heart froze for a moment. She looked so much like Jenny-at least his memory of her. How long had it been since he’d seen his daughter? Six years? No, seven. She was fourteen then. Now a mother… No, not a mother. That’s what the letter from his ex-wife was about. The one that sent him on a long-term bender. The baby had been stillborn.

Gus ,

I’m only writing because Jenny wanted you to know. She was going to name the baby after you. Why, I’ll never know. I don’t even know if this letter will reach you. You’re probably dead too. But I did what our daughter asked me to do and it’s done.

His ex hadn’t even bothered to sign her name.

Gus didn’t blame her.

Old emotions, the guilt and anger, and a sorrow he couldn’t handle, collided inside him. They churned in his stomach and his hands trembled. He clutched the sack with the two bottles of tequila in it like they were his only lifelines. He needed a drink bad. He needed a whole damn bottle worse.

Gus forced himself to walk in the direction where he thought the Caribbean restaurant was located-he remembered it as a kind of hole-in-the-wall place. Along the way, he wandered around the area sizing up the traffic and turning down drug offers. Doorways and alleys drew dealers and buyers like old lovers who could sense a soft touch and a score a block away.

After a couple of hours, Gus stopped and asked a couple of punks with dyed hair if they knew of it. They shrugged, pointed down the street, and kept walking, their laughter trailing behind them.